Say what you will about the New York Times, but Roger Cohen's op-ed piece "On America's Watch" in today's paper draws attention to important missteps by our own government and Pakistan's in protecting the former Prime Minister from seemingly imminent assassination.
Who is to blame for her death? Certainly not our legislature, as Barack Obama's aid was, in my opinion, misinterpreted as alleging. Certainly not Benazir Bhutto herself, who by some people's imagination invited her own death by appearing in public. Everyone is looking for someone to blame because the individual(s) to blame are dead, conveniently avoiding the justice that would be brought down upon them in a more civilized world.
But while we cannot blame our government or, without a full investigation, Pakistan's government for her death, we must evaluate the failure by both to protect this woman who represented hope for democracy in a country where there seems to be none.
Roger Cohen writes:
In recent years, Pakistan has been the home of banks that wired money for the 9/11 plot, been the chief source of illicit nuclear proliferation, offered a tribal-area haven for planners of worldwide terrorism, abetted the reconstitution of the Taliban and educated many a suicide bomber in Islamic religious schools.
At the same time, President Pervez Musharraf, in power since a 1999 coup, has received about $10 billion in U.S. aid, much of it to reinforce the Pakistani military in fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and global jihadism in South Waziristan and other tribal areas.
We cannot ignore that the very nation that we are pumping funds into to fight the War on Terror seems to be host to the most dangerous terrorist activity of any nation in the world. There seems to be a disconnect.
Kossacks will remember the fire that Barack Obama came under after a speech regarding Pakistan in August. He said:
As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.
I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.
Many interpreted his strategy as a threat. But there is one valid argument: It is our money, shouldn't we hold its recipients accountable for its use? If I give you $200 to invest in an alarm system for an office we share, and two weeks later there is no alarm system installed and the money is gone, do I not have a right to know how it has been used to protect us in lieu of an alarm system?
I get it; people were scared at what he might be inciting. But if all the finessing that the Bush administration has done to fight terror in Pakistan has not made any significant improvements after seven years, isn't it time to revisit our strategy? I'd like to know specifically how each and every candidate, GOP or Democrat, plans to protect the world from Pakistan-originated terror. There is a severe lack of accountability, in our government and Pakistan's, and that needs to change.
The New York Times' Roger Cohen writes:
If a U.S. policy was ever broken, this is it.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Western-educated former prime minister who returned from exile on Oct. 18 under a flawed U.S.-mediated plan to shift Pakistan from direct to indirect military rule with a civilian veneer, has given the coup de grâce to this botched American attempt to manage a nuclear-armed Islamic state.
It’s not clear who killed Bhutto, although hers was a chronicle of a death foretold. Musharraf’s government, whose credibility is shot, says that Baitullah Mehsud, a militant with links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, was behind it. That would exonerate the military, whose opposition to the democratic movement Bhutto personified goes back to its execution of her father; the intelligence services that long nurtured Taliban zealots as agents of influence in Afghanistan; and Musharraf himself, who knew Bhutto’s vulnerability.
With accounts of the cause of death shifting from bullet wounds to the bombing that followed the gunfire, it’s too early to discount the possibility that the assassin, or assassins, got some help from Pakistan’s many official reservoirs of extremist Islamist sympathy.
It’s suspicious that both the crime scene and Bhutto’s car were cleaned up before investigators had access. Senator Hillary Clinton’s call for an international inquiry is a good one. How can Musharraf, who showed his contempt for an independent judiciary by dissolving the Supreme Court in November, oversee a credible investigation? It should be accompanied by a U.S. Congressional inquiry into post-9/11 American policy toward Pakistan.
Bravo, Roger Cohen. A "U.S. Congressional inquiry into post-9/11 American policy toward Pakistan" is deserved and necessary. I wish we could hold it tomorrow. However, our President has proven to this country twice how little he values inquiry and commission recommendations, and I fear that we will have to wait until January 2009, when a new President with a better grip on reality takes office. This is not a game of Risk. We need a President who knows that one man's opinion should not dictate foreign policy that impacts the security of the free world.
Before an inquiry can take place, Cohen recommends six things that need clearing up.
First, the United States, out of misplaced deference to Musharraf, failed to secure Bhutto the protection she was demanding. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, visited the United States shortly before her death to plead for help, but was denied the meetings he sought at the top levels of the State Department.
Similarly, the Bush administration failed to pressure Musharraf to accept Bhutto family demands for F.B.I. involvement in the investigation of the attempted assassination of Bhutto on Oct. 18.
Second, Al Qaeda has turned some of its attention from Afghanistan to the richer rewards of upending Pakistan.
Third, Musharraf’s ambivalence has hurt U.S. interests, culminating in a murder that shames America. He has safeguarded the nukes but never ensured that his military or intelligence services break from their Taliban baby. This double game must end.
Fourth, years of strong economic growth have expanded a Pakistani middle class that wants democracy’s rule of law. Radical Islamist parties constitute a minority: unlike in the shah’s Iran, democratic forces outweigh the theocratic.
A discredited Musharraf can do nothing for Pakistan without credible elections. Credibility requires international monitors or a transitional arrangement allowing all major parties to participate in the vote’s organization. The election should be held on or as soon as possible after Jan. 8. A large sympathy vote for Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party is likely.
Fifth, the United States must redirect policy toward forthright support for democracy. The Bush administration has seen the military as a bulwark against extremism. The true bulwark, as Bhutto knew, is the middle class. Barnett Rubin of New York University observed, "If Afghanistan is ready for democracy, Pakistan certainly is."
Sixth, the absence of engagement with Iran leaves the United States overdependent on Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan. A post-9/11 tragedy has been the U.S. failure to build on the Iranian opening that the overthrow of a shared enemy, the Taliban in Kabul, created.
Well-worded, thoughtful, intelligent, and utterly relevant. It's absolutely refreshing to see an editorial as straight-forward as this in a time when misdirected frustration becomes a weapon in the increasingly-aggressive presidential campaign. I'm proud to live in a nation where journalists still have a platform to voice valid concerns about our government, and have the courage to do so.
Cohen closes with a personal anecdote:
Bhutto’s loss is devastating, comparable with Yitzhak Rabin’s. Her Kennedylike family tragedy leaves the fathomless void of what might have been.
I met her more than 30 years ago when we were at Oxford. Arriving late one night at Balliol College, I saw a solitary light in the quadrangle. On a whim, a fellow student and I went to the room. There was Bhutto deep in earnest talk about politics. She was gracious at the intrusion, memorably so.
Of grace and conviction her unusual fusion of East and West was formed. Only Pakistani democracy can avenge, in part, the disappearance of the rare bridge she offered and offset the American mistakes that led to this loss.
Bhutto's death was a tragedy for Pakistan and for us as well. Her leadership would've been a gift, and she an ally to our country in this dangerous time. We can only hope that out of her party will emerge someone as brave and steadfast in the face of threat, terror, and opposition will rise to the task at hand. One thing is for certain, as Cohen points out: things cannot continue along this broken path.